Thursday, June 30, 2016

For as long as I can remember, Derrick has been into "toys" of some sort. Not overly so, but he certainly appreciated them. He owned a motorcycle when we met, and after dating, we moved to Arizona to start a new chapter. We were eventually married there, and after moving into our second home there lived not far from a huge lake (well, reservoir if we're being accurate). During one visit from out of town friends, we rented a boat and enjoyed the water, and this is around the time I remember Derrick talking about getting a boat and enjoying life like that on a regular basis.

We eventually left Arizona and never did get a boat. We moved back to the midwest and lived here a number of years and still didn't have a boat. Then, in 2013 some life circumstances paved the way for us to finally purchase our boat.

This thing truly is Derrick's baby. Well, his fourth baby since his other three human babies take priority. This is our fourth summer enjoying it and we absolutely love it. We've made lots of improvements to it and those will likely continue. We spend weekends on it with friends, enjoy a week with grandma on a different lake each summer, and have even started the kids on learning to wake surf. Amazing summertime memories!

One upside is that we are only 20 minutes from a local reservoir and that is where we spend most of our time. We always appreciated the closeness to home, the fact that it was free, and that we didn't have to spend our weekends also maintaining a home. We just pack up, pick up the boat (we can't store it here for extended periods per our HOA) and GO!

But if we were being honest, trailering everywhere isn't all it's cracked up to be either. Having to pack each thing from scratch each time takes time, especially with three kids. Then the boat has to be cleaned after each use as well (Derrick's rule, not mine lol). Trailering also uses more gas and takes longer to drive. The last couple of years we've really started to explore the idea of a lake house and having a more permanent place to spend our weekends and boat time. The idea of waking up on a Saturday, walking out to the dock and hitting the water without much prep really started to grow on us!

We looked at houses and fell in love with the second one we looked at. I'm thrilled to say that we are under contract and past the dreaded inspection period. I'll hold off posting any pictures of anything until it's officially ours, but we already have our wheels turning with all the amazing things we ultimately want to do to the place! And there is something very unique about this particular navy cottage. I'll share more hopefully soon!